Posts tagged with Linda Winter

It’s difficult to determine how these things get started—how the results of a well-documented experiment conducted nearly 40 years ago become twisted into the frequently made—and widely-accepted—claim that “even well-fed cats hunt.”

This would appear to be a case of validity through repetition: repeat a claim often enough and, eventually, people will come to believe it’s true—never bothering to check the original source. (Pro Tip: For added efficacy, click the heels of your ruby-red slippers together while repeating the claim.)

This, it should go without saying, is not how science is supposed to work. Read more

“Managed cat colonies are often claimed to be the cheapest form of control for areas with feral cats. In Akron, Ohio, nearly 2,500 cats were trapped from public parks. Of these, approximately 500 were adopted while the remaining 2,000 feral, diseased, or injured cats were euthanized. The entire project cost less than $27,000. At the costs paid by Maddie’s Fund in California ($50/neuter, $70/spay), sterilizing just 500 cats would cost approximately $30,000, in addition to the costs of trapping, euthanasia for the sick or injured, and subsequent feeding of all the rest.” [1]

“Advocates of TNR believe that the general public does not support large-scale trap and remove programs and that they are cost-prohibitive. However, in response to complaints from citizens about numerous stray and feral cats, the Akron City Council passed an ordinance on March 25, 2002, prohibiting domestic cats from running at large. As of August 31, 2003, a total of 2,495 stray and feral cats had been trapped by citizens as well as by 4 wardens on an on-call basis and taken to Summit County Animal Control. Of those cats, 530 were redeemed or adopted and 1,965 were euthanatized because they were feral, injured, or diseased. The cost to the City of Akron was $26,546. If the public did not support this program, far fewer cats would have been trapped because private citizens did most of the trapping.” [2]

Whereas Winter emphasizes the apparent community support for Akron’s cat ordinance, TWS is more interested in playing the public-health-threat card—untroubled, it seems, with a bit of revisionist history in their “fact sheet.” I’ve pored over dozens of newspaper stories in the past weeks—spending what Michael Hutchins would likely consider an “inordinate amount of time”—and I’ve found no references to cats being trapped in public parks anywhere in Summit County.

At the time Winter spoke with Glenn James, he held the director’s job at SCAC. In January, 2004, James was fired for a host of problems at the shelter he oversaw. Among them: “widespread use of correction fluid to alter euthanasia logs,” and “a record-keeping system so poor that it’s impossible to determine what happened to dozens of animals.” [3]

It was, it turns out, also impossible to tell what happened to the shelter’s supply of Fatal-Plus, a drug used for euthanasia. (“James eventually pleaded guilty to a single felony charge of illegally processing drug documents after the prosecution determined that, while he did not steal any drugs from the shelter, he knew that they were being taken and did nothing about it.” [4])

All of which raises serious questions about the figures James reported to Winter. One also wonders about the extent to which initial support for the cat ordinance was dependent upon a blissful ignorance of the conditions at SCAC—especially those affecting animal care.

And yet, years later, TWS is suggesting that Akron’s cat ordinance is a model for budget-conscious municipalities across the country. In fact, Akron’s free-roaming cats policy was far more costly than TWS would have us believe, and far less popular than Winter suggests.

It also contributed significantly to the inhumane treatment of animals—cats and dogs alike—brought to the SCAC facility.

True Costs
Comparing the costs of traditional trap-and-kill programs to those associated with TNR is no trivial undertaking. And, as Cornell’s David Pimentel has clearly demonstrated, attempts to account for the environmental impact of feral cat management can quickly devolve into the absurd.

That said, we need to start someplace.

According to Winter/TWS, Akron taxpayers spent approximately $13.50 for each cat euthanized killed—the only ones guaranteed not to reproduce. (As recently as 2006, Summit County didn’t require sterilization of cats redeemed or adopted. [5]) That’s roughly one-fifth of what TWS claims Maddie’s Fund pays for spay/neuter services (described in David Jessup’s 2004 paper [6]).

It’s not clear how James arrived at $26,546, though a similar estimate was reported in a January 2003 story in the Akron Beacon Journal. [7] Comparing 2002 and 2003 Summit County budget documents, SCAC’s “Charges for Services” actually declined slightly from 2002 to 2003. Interestingly, the year-to-year difference in “Total Animal Control” numbers ($26,756) matches almost perfectly James’ figure—but that may be merely a coincidence.

In any event, if TNR were truly five times as costly as Akron’s roundup, one would expect communities all over the country to stick to “traditional” methods of feral cat management.

But, as Mark Kumpf, former president of the National Animal Control Association (NACA) points out, “there’s no department that I’m aware of that has enough money in their budget to simply practice the old capture-and-euthanize policy; nature just keeps having more kittens.” Traditional control methods, argues Kumpf, are akin to “bailing the ocean with a thimble.” [8]

And, contrary to what TWS suggests, bailing the ocean with a thimble isn’t cheap.

Shared Expenses
According to a 2005 report from the Ohio Auditor of State, 21 municipalities—including Akron—“save on overhead costs on employee salaries and benefits, maintaining a fleet of vehicles, and the boarding of animals” by contracting with SCAC. [9] Summit County was saving too, by contracting with the Humane Society of Greater Akron for veterinary and after-hours/emergency response services.

So, even if Akron did pay only $13.50 per cat, it was largely because of the extensive costs absorbed by the 540,000 or so residents of Summit County. But it didn’t take long for Akron to overwhelm County resources.

Summit County’s 2003 Budget report (PDF) includes what appears to be a request for four additional pound-keepers, which would have doubled the staff caring for animals at the shelter. Other information in the same report, however, indicates that SCAC staffing would remain at 2002 levels—suggesting that perhaps the request was more of a political statement than anything else.

Justification for the additional pound-keepers (“responsible for the daily care of all animals brought to the Animal Shelter” as well as “the care and maintenance of the Animal Control facility” [10]) includes what sounds like a perennial complaint: a growing population leading to more “animal problems.” [10] But did the population of Summit County double between 2002 and 2003? Hardly.

A quick check of Wikipedia suggests a 5.4 percent increase from 1990 to 2000, after which it remained flat or even declined slightly. (U.S. Census data: 1980: 524,472; 1990: 514,990; 2000: 542,899: 2010: 541,781.)

So what did change?

“…the City of Akron recently passed a new cat control ordinance, which has created more work for the pound keepers due to the substantial numbers of cats being impounded. To keep up with the escalating problems it will be necessary to hire more staff to maintain the same level of service that is currently being provided. Furthermore, additional supplies and equipment will be needed to accommodate the additional animals being impounded. More revenue will be needed to cover these expenses.” [10]

The Cattery
If the shelter didn’t receive additional help, it at least got a little larger.

In 2002, the facility’s lobby was partitioned to accommodate an 18-by-10 “cattery,” completed just in time for implementation of 332-2002. Cost of the renovation, which James called a “small project,” was $80,000. [11]

“Our decision to build the cattery,” James told the Beacon Journal, “came before plans for the ordinance.” [12] Fair enough—newspaper accounts indicate that James first floated the idea in 1998, a year after Akron considered licensing cats. “We want to be prepared when the time comes that we have to control cats more stringently. It’s just good common sense. Every animal control facility should have a cattery.” [13]

Still, it’s doubtful that Akron’s city council would have voted in favor of the cat ordinance had the cattery not been in the works. Indeed, they had scrapped the cat licensing proposal for this very reason (“the city decided not to because its animal shelters would have had to keep cats for three days before disposing of them, and they didn’t have the room”). [14]

The cattery increased Summit County’s capacity from four cages to 24, with 12 more in the “overflow room” [15] (though James told the Beacon Journal, “We could hold up to a maximum of 50 cats at one time”). [12]

A NACA study team, summoned by Summit County to review conditions and practices at SCAC, were unimpressed. Among the 132 recommendations included in their 2004 report: “Summit County should explore the possibility of constructing a new animal sheltering facility within the very near future” [15] (the emphasis is theirs, not mine). Indeed, the facility was awarded NACA’s lowest rating: 1 (“an immediate need”).

Cost of Living Dying Increase
As part of their deal with Akron, SCAC agreed to hold cats for five days: “three days to give the owners time [sic] retrieve them and another two days for adoption purposes.” [16] Akron was to pay $5 per day for the “mandatory three-day stay and the $10 disposal fee, if need be.” [16] (In fact, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that many cats and kittens were killed long before their time was up.)

But Akron’s cat ordinance quickly became a victim of its own “success,” with about 900 cats “plucked from city streets” [17] in the first three months alone.

Intake numbers for previous years vary considerably. In 1999, for example, James told the Beacon Journal “At least 200 stray cats each year are trapped by residents and brought to the Summit County Animal Shelter.” [18] In 2002, six weeks prior to the cat ordinance going into effect, the paper reported (again, citing James) that 400 cats “wind up at the county shelter each year.” [11] Then, in another story just seven months later, the figure was 3,500. [19]

Two years later, in a 2004 op-ed, the Beacon Journal suggested “100 or so had been the norm.” [20]

Whatever the numbers were, it’s clear that the increase overwhelmed available resources. So, in 2004, the County proposed rate increases for its animal services, “largely,” as Beacon Journal reporter Lisa A. Abraham put it, “because of the crush of stray cats the city has been depositing at the shelter.” [21] The cost to house a cat doubled, as did the fee for putting a cat down. (The increased “business” affected dogs, too: their housing fees also increased from $5 to $10 per day, while the cost to put a dog down tripled to $30.)

Additional Expenses
In addition, numerous ancillary expenses were incurred in response to 332-2002.

The NACA reviews, for instance—one in 2004, and a follow-up in 2006—were, it seems clear, a response to extensive criticism of shelter conditions, policies, and practices by local groups opposed to the cat ordinance. [22, 23] The cost: $8,000. [24]

In 2003, Summit County committed about $15,000 “to install cameras and other security equipment at the county animal shelter.” [25]

“The move is part of increased scrutiny of the shelter, which has come under fire from animal activists who allege that inhumane treatment of animals and criminal behavior have gone on at the North Street facility.” [25]

The following year, Akron’s city council approved $16,000 to microchip 1,000 cats, and “conduct some low-cost spaying and neutering clinics around the city.” [26]

“The move came in response to the furor that was created after the council passed a law two years ago, allowing free-roaming cats to be picked up if someone complained.” [26]

Akron had purchased five microchip scanners in 2002, but, as customer service administrator John Hoffman told the Beacon Journal two years later, “ha[d] yet to scan a chip.” [27] (Estimated cost: $1,500.)

It’s not clear how much sterilization was done (or how many residents took advantage of the microchip offer, for that matter). In fact, Hoffman was forced to defend what some saw as misplaced priorities (clearly, such efforts are aimed at pets and not feral cats):

“What I’ve heard is that some groups prefer us to spend our money doing neutering, and that’s something we’re considering that will come later… But I don’t follow the objections There’s no harm, no foul. And at $10, it’s affordable, so I cannot imagine a legitimate reason not to do this.” [26]

Eradication at Any Cost
Suddenly, Maddie’s sixty-bucks-a-cat is starting to look like the real bargain.

Not that I’m prepared to assign an exact number to the per-cat cost of Akron’s cat ordinance—sure to be a painful, unproductive exercise in “Pimentelian economics.” Still, though, it’s easy to imagine the true cost of 332-2002 being comparable to—or even exceeding—the costs of TNR.

When it comes right down to it, though, I think the real attraction for TWS is not the (fictitious) price tag of Akron’s cat ordinance, but its incompatibility with feral cats in general and TNR in particular. In the community, Akron’s unsocialized cats are at great risk; in the hands of SCAC, they’re sure to be killed.

Community Support
Winter’s measure of community support—the number cats trapped by Akron residents—is, given the vast discrepancies in reporting, likely to be inaccurate. Even at its most accurate, though, such a measure is remarkably incomplete.

Legal Opposition
Winter never mentions the controversy surrounding the City Council’s vote on 332-2002, for example. Just days before its implementation, the council—“faced with the looming threat of a lawsuit”—repealed the original ordinance. [16]

“Immediately afterward, the council unanimously passed a nearly identical version of the law as an emergency measure. It went into effect immediately as Mayor Don Plusquellic signed it following the meeting… City officials say this version should withstand legal scrutiny if a group of cat fanciers—Citizens for Humane Animal Practices, or CHAP—makes good on its threat of a lawsuit.” [16]

Earlier that evening, CHAP members held a candlelight vigil and protest.

Although CHAP’s request for a preliminary injunction was denied in late 2002, the judge hearing the case acknowledged the risk of “irreparable harm” posed by Akron’s cat ordinance:

“‘Due to the lack of guidelines and/or policies, it is possible for cats to be euthanized’ without their owner or owners ever receiving proper notification, she wrote. If a cat owner never receives notification—and that individual’s pet is picked up and ultimately destroyed—the owners are indeed ‘irreparably injured/harmed,’ she said.” [28]

For “owners” of feral and stray cats, of course, there was never any proper notification.

General Opposition
Letters to the Beacon Journal’s editor seem to fall almost exclusively in the opposition camp (though, to be fair, I did not do a rigorous comparison).

Brenda Graham’s January 31, 2003, letter (one of at least two she had published in the Beacon Journal) compared the “the slaughter of healthy cats and kittens” brought on by 332-2002 to “the Salem witch hunts of the 17th century. Both are founded in ignorance and spite.” [29] Even so, Graham remained optimistic about her community: “We can turn this around and showcase Akron as compassionate and progressive, not barbaric.” [29]

“Why does the city use our tax dollars wastefully on a process that is both ineffective and cruel?” asked Patricia Shaw in her July 13, 2003, letter. “Why can’t Akron’s animal-control policies be brought into the 21st century?” [30]

“Many major cities have determined that euthanasia does not solve the problem of animal overpopulation. There is too much information out there for Akron City Council to be still operating in the Dark Ages. If others have found a better way, why can’t Akron do the same? I can’t imagine that these cities’ councils have a corner on intelligence.” [30]

Shaw’s vocal opposition to SCAC’s policies made her the subject of retaliation, resulting in the killing of dozen of cats and kittens for which she’d agreed to find homes (see below).

How closely these examples reflect opinions throughout the community is anybody’s guess. They may well represent a small minority—however vocal. On the other hand, I haven’t seen a single mention of a public discussion of 332-2002 among the dozens of Beacon Journal stories I’ve read on the topic—it seems there was very little public input on either side of the issue.

Finally, there’s the issue of effectiveness. No doubt supporters of the cat ordinance figured that killing 2,000 or so cats each year would make a difference in the number of stray and feral cats. If you’re determined to bail the ocean with a thimble, I don’t suppose it makes much difference that you’re 500 miles away.

Animal Services/Care
Economics and politics aside, it’s important to consider how cats were treated in the aftermath of 332-2002 (a factor TWS and Winter conveniently overlook). Akron’s cat ordinance, it’s clear, exacerbated a number of problems within SCAC, and created plenty of new ones. And, as is often the case, the animals suffered tremendously as a result.

A History of Abuses
I’ve been unable to determine precisely when Glenn James joined SCAC (the earliest newspaper story in which his name appears is dated June 1989), but it’s clear that he inherited a profoundly dysfunctional organization.

“For the most part—and especially in years past,” writes Beacon Journal reporter Charlene Nevada in her 1991 profile of James, “the people who chase dogs in Summit County have found themselves on the payroll because of political friends.” [31]

“James was hired and promoted because it became obvious to those around him that this was someone who walks on two feet but understands those who walk on four.” [31]

Maybe so, but it seems there wasn’t much competition, either.

Dog warden Joseph Kissel, who took over in the fall of 1988, had been on the job just two weeks when news that his wife had for years been selling cats—obtained free from the shelter—for $25 to $30 apiece to research facilities, including the Northeast Ohio Universities College of Medicine. [32]

“Kissel said his wife was treated like anyone else. Anyone can get as many cats as are available for free, he said. ‘Anybody who walks off the street. Can I have a cat? Yeah. Can I have 10 cats? Yeah. Can I have all of them? Yeah,’ Kissel said. He refused to discuss his wife’s business in detail, saying it was her business, not his. Kissel declined to estimate how many cats were released by the pound each year for sale to medical research organizations or how many his wife had received.” [32]

By 1991, with James in charge, SCAC had cut out the middleman, “illegally selling dogs from its animal shelter to research facilities for $27 over the state-imposed price,” bringing in perhaps as much as $16,000 in pound seizure fees. [33]

Akron’s Cats
The first four days under 332-2002 were a harbinger of grim days to come. Of the 53 cats brought into the shelter, “43 were too sickly to be kept and were euthanized.” [34]

“The sick cats were found to have ringworm, upper respiratory infections or were severely flea infested. Most were malnourished and appeared to be feral—wild cats that aren’t used to human contact… Some were kittens who hadn’t been weaned from their mother and wouldn’t survive…” [34]

For Akron’s cats, a runny nose had become fatal. Deadly, too, was a feral appearance—whatever that means.

And still, Hoffman told the Beacon Journal—presumably with a straight face—“We are not killing cats.”

“If there is any kind of ID tag, we’re calling that phone number and giving that cat a ride home,” Hoffman said. “If no cat goes to the animal shelter, that’s fine. We’re hoping to keep people’s pets safe and only deal with the true problem.” [34]

The “true problem,” though, was the number of cats being killed. In fact, the 81 percent kill rate demonstrated during the first four days was nothing new for Summit County; in 1988, Kissel told the Beacon Journal that 90–95 percent of the 3,000–4,000 cats brought into the shelter each year were killed. [32] (The fact that Kissel couldn’t narrow down the number of intakes any further is both alarming and indicative of conditions at the facility.)

During the first six months, the kill rate tapered off to 70 percent. [7] Six months later, the rate was up to 79 percent. [2] Imagine: four out of every five cats brought to SCAC were, as Winter suggests, “feral, injured, or diseased.” [2]

Three years later, the Beacon Journal reported to a 65 percent kill rate for cats brought into the shelter during 2005 (dogs fared slightly better, with a 49 percent kill rate). [35]

How credible any of these figures are—in light of SCAC’s record-keeping problems—is unclear, of course. Still, even their best numbers are nothing to be proud of.

Systemic Problems
The NACA reviews and related media coverage exposed a laundry list of failures at SCAC. Among them:

At the time of the original NACA review, Summit County’s shelter was open to the public only 28 hours each week (10:00–3:00 Monday–Friday; 12:00–3:00 on Saturdays), prompting the study team to comment: “current shelter hours do not favor today’s working households.” [15]

“During peak periods of the year,” notes the 2004 NACA report, “the facility generally operates at 100 percent capacity.” [15] Yet, on weekends, two assistant pound-keepers were allocated just 11 hours between them—to care for the shelter’s animals, clean the facility [with its 120 cages], and attend to any visitors during the three hours the shelter was open to the public on Saturdays. “The shelter could remain closed on Sundays,” suggests the report, “however the facility should be cleaned and all animals should receive food, water and care.” [15] That’s right: SCAC had to be told by NACA to take care of the animals in its care on weekends.

The drama surrounding the top job at SCAC didn’t end with James’ termination. James’ replacement, Jeffrey Wright, resigned under pressure after just a year on the job—during which time he used nearly three weeks of sick time. [36] Anthony Moore, who was appointed acting animal control manager following Wright’s departure, last only nine months, “demoted for using a diluted formula of the euthanasia drug on animals at the shelter.” (It didn’t help that Moore had drawn criticism for removing cats “from their cages with neck hooks during hours when visitors were in the facility.”) [37] Christine Congrove, who had been James’ secretary, took over in 2006, drawing fire for her lack of qualifications and experience, $61,000 starting salary, and family ties (she’s the daughter of then-councilman Dan Congrove). [37] Congrove—now Christine Fatheree—remains Animal Control Manager today.

Not only was Summit County’s kill rate incredibly high, their methods were often inhumane. Among the alarming results of a 2003 investigation by then-County Executive James McCarthy: “cats are euthanized with needles large enough for a cow.” [3] Even more controversial was the SCAC’s practice of intracardiac injection—or heart-stick—“a procedure for euthanizing animals by using a long needle to inject drugs directly into their hearts.” [38] And a 2006 lawsuit (more tax dollars wasted) alleged that shelter staff, having used insufficient doses of Fatal-Plus, were “throwing live animals in the freezer.” [39]

Despite apparent concerns for the number of stray and abandoned pets, sterilization was clearly not a priority for Summit County. Among NACA’s “immediate need” recommendations in 2004 was this: “any cat or dog adoption should include some form of required sterilization, preferably prior to adoption.” [15] Two years later, though, NACA reviewers reported “no progress,” using the reevaluation to emphasize once again, “The sterilization of adopted animals should be mandatory.” [5] At that time, Summit County also hadn’t implemented a low-cost spay/neuter program in the community. [40] (Today, all pets adopted from Summit County are sterilized, although it’s not clear that any community-based low-cost spay/neuter programs have been put in place.)

Criticism of shelter practices led to retaliation against local rescue groups. [3, 41] In “House of Horrors,”Cleveland Scene reporter Aina Hunter (now at CBS News), details the horrendous treatment Patricia Shaw received as, on two separate occasions, cats and kittens she’d agreed to find homes for were killed. (James “did it to teach us a lesson,” says Shaw. “He did it to show that he has the power of life and death—not people like me.” [41]) Hunter’s reporting reveals the abuses and deteriorating morale of an organization that had come entirely off the rails. (Interestingly, about the same time Hunter was uncovering the horrors inside Summit County’s shelter, Linda Winter was discussing the apparent success of Akron’s cat ordinance with the man in charge.)

A Long Way to Go
SCAC has made some notable improvements in recent years—the most obvious its new $2.96 million shelter, which opened its doors last August. Those doors are open more often, too (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday: 10 am–5 pm; Wednesday: 10 am–7 pm; Saturday: 10 am–3 pm).

There’s also a volunteer program. And earlier this year, the County nearly tripled its budget for veterinary care at the facility. [42]

Still, the there’s nothing listed under the Events and Programs tab, and the e-mail link for Fatheree won’t get you very far (her e-mail address is incomplete).

More worrisome, however, is the response I got when I did get through to Fatheree, asking for recent intake, redemption, adoption, and euthanasia figures:

“Good afternoon, Christine Fatheree has sent me your request for public records. These records were destroyed per our records retention schedule and no longer available. Thank you.” —Jill Hinig Skapin, Director of Communications

Some problems just can’t be fixed with a three-million-dollar shelter.

• • •

Nine years later, it’s impossible to tell if 332-2002 is “working”—at least from the information I’ve been able to gather. But, given all that’s known about efforts to eradicate cats from oceanic islands, I doubt Akron’s cat ordinance has made much of a difference at all in terms of the number of stray and feral cats.

There’s no doubt at all, though, that the roundup has been far costlier than TWS suggests in its “fact sheet.”

I’m actually well past the point of being surprised by what TWS is trying to pull here. But I am a little surprised that they would expect anybody to fall for it. Executive Director/CEO Michael Hutchins likes to brag about TWS’s “10,000+ strong membership of wildlife professionals.” I wonder: How many of those 10,000+ does Hutchins take to be such fools?

Listening to the floor debate, one gets the impression there were two—maybe three—different bills up for discussion. Not that House members got any help from sponsor Curtis Oda (R). Indeed, Oda’s rambling, disjointed presentation only muddied the waters further.

Among the bill’s provisions is an exemption for animal cruelty in cases where the individual responsible for harming or killing an animal acted reasonably, in the protection of people or property. Also included—and the source of the greatest controversy—is an allowance for “the humane shooting of an animal in an unincorporated area of a county, where hunting is not prohibited, if the person doing the shooting has a reasonable belief that the animal is a feral animal.”

This Is Not About Cats
Referring to the bad press HB 210 has received over the past few weeks (including a stinging satire on The Colbert Report, which was widely circulated on the Web), Oda was, not surprisingly, defensive.

“It wasn’t about cats; it’s about all animals that are feral—including cats, dogs, pigeons, pigs, whatever it might be… But the cat community has made it a cat issue, so let’s talk cats.”

And talk cats he did.

“Let’s get into some of the other reasons why we need some of this… The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—and because it was made into a cat issue, I’m using cats—cites that cats and other introduced predators are responsible for much of the migratory bird loss. Domestic and feral may kill hundreds of millions of songbirds and other avian species every year, roughly 39 million birds annually. They’re opportunistic hunters, taking any small animal available—pheasants, native quail, grouse, turkeys, waterfowl, and endangered piping plovers. Most of these birds are protected species.”

That 39 million figure, of course, comes from the notorious Wisconsin Study, and represents Coleman and Temple’s “intermediate… estimate of the number of birds killed annually by rural cats in Wisconsin.” [1] Nothing more than a “best guess,” as the authors call it, and one based entirely on the predation of a single cat in rural Virginia. [2, 3]

It’s a figure commonly found in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) publications, [4, 5] and on their Website. (Oda’s not the first one to mistake this for an estimate of predation across the country, however; Frank Gill made the same error in his book Ornithology. [6])

Oda’s choice of bird species surely raised a few eyebrows—at least among those who were paying attention. First of all, a number of the birds are hunted in Utah—which would seem to complicate the predation issue significantly (though, of course, hunters are paying for the “privilege” of killing wildlife).

And those “endangered piping plovers” (technically, listed as “Near Threatened”)? According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Website, this “small pale shorebird of open sandy beaches and alkali flats…[apparently, Utah’s salt flats don’t count] is found along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, as well as inland in the northern Great Plains.”

Economic Impact
Once Oda brought up Wisconsin, it seemed almost inevitable that Nebraska, too, would creep into the debate. It didn’t take long.

“The Audubon magazine recently cited a new peer-reviewed paper by University of Nebraska–Lincoln—researchers concluding that feral cats—domestic that live outdoors and are ownerless—in other words, feral—account for $17 billion—that’s billion—in economic loss from predation on birds in the U.S. every year.”

That $17 million dollar figure (which, apparently, was just too good for the National Audubon Society, American Bird Conservancy, and others to pass up) is based on some very dubious math (indeed, the paper notes that birders spend just $0.40 for each bird seen, whereas hunters spend $216 for each bird shot, suggesting, it seems, that dead birds are far more valuable than live birds—a point NAS and ABC, of course, ignored entirely).

The origins of the figure can be traced to two papers by Cornell’s David Pimentel and his colleagues, [7, 8] in which the authors estimate “economic damages associated with alien invasive species.” [8]

Referring to this work, Hoagland and Jin, resource economists at the Marine Policy Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, (using the case of the European green crab to make their point) warn: “There are many reasons to be concerned about the use of these estimates for policymaking.” [9] Among their concerns, are the use of potential rather than actual impacts, and the validity of the underlying science—as well as the overall lack of rigor involved in developing such estimates.

“Heretofore, estimates of the economic losses arising from invasive species have been far too casual. Unfounded calculations of economic damages lacking a solid demonstration of ecological effects are misleading and wasteful.” [9]

Predation Estimates
Oda then tried to put the predation into context:

“In Utah alone, if we assume a million households, you can estimate around a third of them have cats—that’s 333,333. If we just add a feral population of at least that many, making it two-thirds of a million—if each cat killed just three birds per year, you can see that the predation is around two million each year.”

Three birds/year is more conservative than what’s used for many back-of-the-envelope estimates, but that doesn’t excuse the flaws in Oda’s calculation—beginning with his suggestion that the number of feral cats in the state equals the number of pet cats. Where’s the evidence?

He’s also assuming that all cats hunt. However, about two-thirds of pet cats don’t even go outside. [10–12]

And then, of course, there’s the issue of impact. Even if Oda’s right about the two million birds, that says nothing about the impact on their populations. Are the birds common? Rare? Healthy? Unhealthy? Etc.

Referring to “Cats and Wildlife: A Conservation Dilemma,” another of the Wisconsin Study papers, [13] Oda continues:

“Nationwide, cats probably kill over a billion mammals and hundreds of millions of birds each year. Worldwide, cats may have been involved in the extinction of more bird species than any other cause except by habitat destruction.”

Again, no mention of impact. And, no mention of where the vast majority of those extinctions took place. According to Gill’s Ornithology:

“Most (119, or 92 percent) of the 129 bird species that have become officially extinct in the past 500 years are island species. Roughly half of these species were exterminated by introduced predators and diseases. The rest were driven to extinction by direct human exploitation and habitat destruction.” [6]

However isolated Utah may seem at times—politically, socially, and culturally—the state is not an actual island.

“David Jessup, a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, has written that trap, neuter, and release programs are not working as well as it has been touted. I’ve got packets here talking about that. If anybody wants to see it, they’re welcome to that.”

In fact, Jessup offers little to support his own sweeping claim that, “in most locations where TNR has been tried, it fails to substantially or quickly reduce cat numbers and almost never eliminates feral cat populations” [14] Instead, he refers to a paper by Linda Winter, [15] former director of ABC’s Cats Indoors! campaign—and prolific source of misinformation on the subject of TNR.

Oda continues:

“Releasing feral cats back into the wild is actually an unnatural act. They are unnatural predators that compete [for] food with eagles, hawks, owls, ferrets, etc.”

This last point, it would seem, is a reference to the often-cited work of William George, who suggested that “cats inevitably compete for prey with many of our declining raptors, and therein may lie a serious problem.” [16] It turns out, though, that George’s concerns were largely unfounded, as I’ve discussed previously.

No wonder Oda turned to Jessup and Winter for a TNR primer—the man simply doesn’t have a clue:

“Citizens that want to help are often met with expenses and inconveniences that deter them. Many who monitor TNR colonies are not managing them correctly. I had one lady who said she had more than 100 cats that she had saved with TNR, but kept getting new cats almost weekly. She’d been feeding them more than what they could do on their own, thereby attracting new cats.”

I rather doubt that making it legal to shoot at feral cats will somehow make caretakers’ lives easier. And why, if Oda thinks regular citizens are unable to properly manage a colony of feral cats, is he so sure they’ll be able to properly distinguish a feral cat from a pet in the event they want to shoot it?

Oda’s complaint about feeding feral cats—and the idea that this attracts additional cats—is a common one. Cats are remarkably resourceful, and where there are people, there is food. Better to have them part of a managed colony, where they are sterilized—and often adopted, too—than to be under the radar.

The same argument can be made for the alleged relationship between TNR and the dumping of cats. It’s difficult to imagine that the presence or absence of a nearby TNR program would affect a person’s decision to abandon his/her pet cat(s). (If any studies had demonstrated such a connection, TNR opponents would surely cite them.) And, under the circumstances, isn’t it better that they be “enrolled” in a TNR program than the alternative?

“Releasing is also unfair to the rest of the neighborhood,” argued Oda, “who’s adversely affected.”

“It doesn’t affect just the person monitoring. But the problem is much bigger than TNR only. An unspayed female cat can have up to three litters per year, with an average of five kittens per litter, so as you can see, the problem grows exponentially.”

A Little Something for Everybody
At this point, Oda’s presentation moves beyond the bogus science and tired, baseless complaints—and pretty well comes off the rails entirely.

“This bill does not replace TNR, but it’s supposed to work potentially in conjunction with TNR, but we need to make sure everybody uses those TNR programs properly. We do have a serious problem with irresponsible owners, and we can’t make it unreasonable for them to take their animals to shelters and animal control facilities… We need to make things a little bit easier for people to help, not just make it easier for them to—” [lost audio]

How open season on feral cats is “supposed to work potentially in conjunction with TNR” is a mystery—and one Oda didn’t have a chance to clear up. At this point, his colleagues give him just one more minute to wrap things up.

“We just need to make it easier for people to be able to do things the right way, instead of making it so ridiculously expensive and inconvenient—so that it’s easier for them to just take their animals and drop them off anywhere else, whether it be cats or dogs, or whatever it may be. Perhaps down the road we might have to have mandatory licensing for cats. We do that with dogs already and the problem with dogs has diminished substantially.”

Huh?

Are we still talking about the same bill here? HB 210 does nothing at all to address dumping, intake policies at shelters, or licensing. The confusion only worsened as several representatives supporting the bill took to the House floor to make their positions known.

Supporters
Rep. Fred Cox (R), who helped revise the bill, suggested that HB 210 offers a means of controlling the population of feral cats—a complement to TNR programs:

“We spent quite a bit of time reviewing with proposed amendments… We did have the opportunity of listening to a number of individuals speak for and on behalf of various options… You have to decide whether or not it’s a good idea for individuals to purposely release certain animals—sometimes in large quantities into the wild that were not originally designed to be here. There are certain parts of the world that have had problems with this area, and in some cases, we have problems now. This provides us an option. We still have other options that are available—with trap, neuter, and release—those are still on the table. This does not prohibit those methods to be used, but does allow another method to be used.”

“I represent a lot of rural farmers and ranchers, and this bill is critical to them. I can’t have a farmer or rancher going to jail or to prison because they take care of a feral cat or a feral dog that is on their ranch or their farm, that somebody inhumanely took out and dumped out in the middle of western Box Elder County or in western Cache County. When the people go out there and dump their animals, thinking they’re being humane and putting them… out into the wild or onto somebody’s farm, they’re actually harming those animals more than what these farmers or ranchers would be doing in basically being humane, and putting them out of their misery at that point. Because these animals are eventually going to starve to death, in some cases, and die. They’re left in the cold, in the elements. These are usually animals that are meant to be raised in a house, and in a controlled environment. Because of that, I support this substitute bill, and I would ask that the body would support it as well.”

“I had an individual that lives just a few miles west of my home who was basically attacked by a cat—had a cat that scratched him on his hand, and he basically just flung it against the wall. This individual was charged with a third-degree felony.”

A search of several newspapers tells a very different story. Reese Ransom, 85, was actually charged with aggravated animal cruelty—a misdemeanor—when he severely injured a feral kitten. When Ransom picked up the kitten—one of a litter he and his wife had been feeding—to bring it inside:

But Galvez, who—don’t forget—lives just a few miles east of Ransom, completely misrepresents the facts of the case to his colleagues. There’s no telling whether or not his “interpretation” of events had any bearing on the eventual vote, but it raises questions about the man’s integrity.

“I am… the daughter of a rancher and a cattleman, but have another perspective on this. I realize the threat to cattle of these pests, or feral animals. But, in our particular case, we encourage the population of feral cats, as we have four granaries, and they were some of our best farm workers, and kept down the rodent population. My main problem with this bill is, there’s no designation between what’s considered a feral animal and your beloved house pet. And I think this bill gives license to kill in those areas. My other consideration here is that I have received so many letters from constituents upset by this bill that if I voted for it, I would be considered feral.”

Rep. David Litvack (D) wasn’t buying what Oda and his supporters were selling, especially when it comes to defining feral. “If a person knows that a particular animal is a pet of their neighbor,” explained Oda during his introductory comments, “it’s not feral. If it’s wearing a collar, it’s not feral. If there’s other signs it’s very friendly, obviously it’s not feral.”

Litvack was unmoved:

“I believe it is wrong for us, as a state, to move in the direction where we are having individuals make the decision, the determination on their own (1) what is feral, and (2) now, that they can shoot them, even if it’s only in an unincorporated county. Not a good policy, and, quite frankly, a bit of an embarrassment to the state of Utah.”

Referring specifically to Lines 153 and 154 of the amended bill (“…the humane shooting of an animal in an unincorporated area of a county, where hunting is not prohibited, if the person doing the shooting has a reasonable belief that the animal is a feral animal.”), Rep. Brian King (D) took a similar stance:

“My concern is that we’re providing a loophole in the statute for individuals that want to use this as an opportunity to go out and satisfy [lost audio] they get pleasure from going out and just shooting what are now defined as feral animals just for the pleasure of killing the animal… This is a bill that’s been brought to us now, in its amended form, just today, and we haven’t had a chance to hear from the Humane Society, from other individuals or agencies that have an interest in this. And my concern is that, although I think there is undoubtedly a reasonable need for individuals under certain circumstances—in rural areas, especially—to control feral animal populations that are causing damage, I still have concerns—without more input from those who deal with this, and have really had a chance to think the language through—in voting it out of our body.”

“We spent quite a bit of time reviewing with proposed amendments,” countered Cox. “We did have the opportunity of listening to a number of individuals speak for and on behalf of various options.”

Cox offered no specifics about who was invited to the bargaining table. And it may not have made any difference anyhow—like Oda and Perry, Cox seems to think HB 210 is about feral cat management:

“You have to decide whether or not it’s a good idea for individuals to purposely release certain animals—sometimes in large quantities into the wild that were not originally designed to be here. There are certain parts of the world that have had problems with this area, and in some cases, we have problems now. This provides us an option. We still have other options that are available—with trap, neuter, and release—those are still on the table. This does not prohibit those methods to be used, but does allow another method to be used.”

Rep. Paul Ray (R) responded to King’s concern by comparing TNR to abandonment (an argument perhaps first articulated by Jessup, who refers to TNR as “trap, neuter, and reabandon” [14]):

“It’s against the law to abandon an animal… [TNR practitioners] abandon the animal again. So when we’re talking about getting the perfect language, I’m not sure we can do that because even under the current law we have right now, we have some discrepancies…”

Setting aside the TNR/abandonment issue for the moment, that’s quite a position to take for somebody whose job it is to craft legislation: What we’ve got now isn’t perfect, so why bother?

Oda’s response was no better. “Out in the rural areas,” he said, referring to the concerns about the ambiguity surrounding the term feral, “they know exactly what animals belong in the area, so that’s not even an issue.”

This, I’m sure, was no consolation to Litvack or King.

Shoot First, Ask Questions Later
If you missed the part where the bill’s supporters defend—or even explain—the need for Utahns to be able to shoot feral animals, you’re not alone. I’ve listened to the entire debate at least twice now and still don’t get it.

Under HB 210, for example, the crime of animal cruelty requires that “the person’s conduct is not reasonable and necessary to protect: (1) the actor or another person from injury or death; or (2) property from damage or loss if the property is an animal; or other property that is $50 or more in value.” (The $50 threshold seems like too low a bar to me, but it was never mentioned during the floor debate.)

This, it seems, goes an awful long way toward protecting farmers and ranchers who are merely protecting their livestock. And the Reese Ransoms of the world, too. Moreover, there’s already a provision in Utah’s animal cruelty code exempting a “person who humanely destroys any apparently abandoned animal found on the person’s property” (which, strangely, never came up during the HB 210 debate).

Granted, the bill’s amended language does lessen its potential impact on feral cats by restricting “the humane shooting of an animal” to unincorporated areas “where hunting is not prohibited.” Hunting regulations must comply with Utah criminal code, which prohibits the “discharge any kind of dangerous weapon or firearm… without written permission to discharge the dangerous weapon from the owner or person in charge of the property within 600 feet of: a house, dwelling, or any other building; or any structure in which a domestic animal is kept or fed, including a barn, poultry yard, corral, feeding pen, or stockyard.”

Even so, the shooting provision of HB 210 strikes me as essentially indefensible. It’s simply an invitation for senseless cruelty. Representative Litvack is exactly right: “Not a good policy, and, quite frankly, a bit of an embarrassment to the state of Utah.”

• • •

It will be interesting to see what happens when HB 210 moves to the Utah Senate, where, just last week, TNR-friendly SB 57 was passed. Among its provisions:

“This bill… defines a sponsor of a cat colony as a person who actively traps cats in a colony for the purpose of sterilizing, vaccinating, and ear-tipping before returning the cat to its original location; exempts community cats from the three-day mandatory hold requirement; and allows a shelter that receives a feral cat to release it to a sponsor that operates a cat program.”

I encourage readers to listen to the HB 210 debate in its entirety, as it provides a fascinating glimpse of democracy in action—warts and all (including, for example, when Oda responds to the call for a vote with “Meow.”) The SMIL audio file is available here, and the required Real Audio application can be downloaded free here.

That’s what somebody posted on the Vox Felina Facebook page late last night—along with a link to an MSNBC news story. The headline was an attention-getter, no doubt about it: “Report: Kill feral cats to control their colonies.”

“The report began in an undergraduate wildlife management class, with students writing reports on feral cats based on existing research. The students’ professor and other [University of Nebraska] researchers then compiled the report from the students’ work.” [1]

“Feral Cats and Their Management” claims, straightforwardly enough, to provide “research-based information on the management of feral cats.” [2] Management, in this case, meaning—as is so often the case in such contexts—killing, extermination, eradication, and so forth. Detailed advice is provided (e.g., “Body-gripping traps and snares can be used to quickly kill feral cats”).

It’s no surprise that the authors of the report offer no evidence to support such a sweeping claim. “There are few if any studies,” write Mike Fitzgerald and Dennis Turner in their contribution to The Domestic Cat: The biology of its behaviour, “apart from island ones that actually demonstrate that cats have reduced bird populations.” [3]

Biologist C.J. Mead, reviewing the deaths of “ringed” (banded) birds reported by the British public, suggests that cats may be responsible for 6.2–31.3% of bird deaths. “Overall,” writes Mead, “it is clear that cat predation is a significant cause of death for most of the species examined.” Nevertheless, Mead concludes, “there is no clear evidence of cats threatening to harm the overall population level of any particular species… Indeed, cats have been kept as pets for many years and hundreds of generations of birds breeding in suburban and rural areas have had to contend with their predatory intentions.” [4]

The German zoologist Paul Leyhausen (1916–1998), who spent the bulk of his career studying the behavior of cats, found that cats, frustrated by the difficulties of catching them, “may soon give up hunting birds.” [5]

“During years in the field,” wrote Leyhausen, “I have observed countless times how cats have caught a mouse or a rat and just as often how they have stalked a bird. But I never saw them catch a healthy songbird that was capable of flying. Certainly it does happen, but, as I have said, seldom. I should feel sorry for the average domestic cat that had to live solely on catching birds.” [5]

“Cats kill an estimated 480 million birds per year (assuming eight birds killed per feral cat per year).”

Fitzgerald and Turner (whose work is not referenced in the report) argue that “we do not have enough information yet to attempt to estimate on average how many birds a cat kills each year.” [3] Though, of course, many studies have tried to do exactly that—few, it should be said, involve feral cats.

“Estimates from Wisconsin indicate that between 500,000 and 8 million birds are killed by rural cats each year in that state…”

How anybody could misquote the numbers from the Wisconsin Study—easily the most widely circulated work on the subject—is a mystery. (On the other hand, the figures were, as Stanley Temple has said, “not actual data” [6] in the first place, so I suppose that does allow for some rather liberal interpretation.)

How important is it that the prey of feral cats is native, versus non-native? That’s a point of some debate—but not in this case. See, what Liberg actually wrote was this: “Most cats (80-85%) were house-based and obtained from 15 to 90% of their food from natural prey, depending on abundance and availability of the latter.” [7, emphasis mine] He was merely drawing the distinction between food provided by humans and any prey that cats might eat as food.

“In California, 67 percent of rodents, 95 percent of birds, and 100 percent of lizards brought home by cats were native species, and native birds were twice as likely to be seen in areas without cats.”

What looks to be truly damning evidence loses much of its impact when it’s seen in context. The reference to Crooks and Soulé’s 1999 paper, for example, omitted the sample size involved: “Identification of 68 prey items returned by cats bordering the fragments indicated that 67% of 26 rodents, 95% of 21 birds and 100% of 11 lizards were native species.” [8] It’s important to note, too, that these researchers asked residents to recall what kind of prey their cats returned—no prey items were collected—thereby raising questions about the accuracy of species attribution.

Furthermore, the cats involved with Crooks and Soulé’s study were all pet cats. How their habits compare with those of feral cats is an open question. Merritt Clifton of Animal People, an independent newspaper dedicated to animal protection issues, suggests, “feral cats appear to hunt no more, and perhaps less, than free-roaming pet cats. This is because, like other wild predators, they hunt not for sport but for food, and hunting more prey than they can eat is a pointless waste of energy.”

The second portion of the quote refers to Cole Hawkins’ PhD dissertation. Hawkins’ research methods and analysis are so problematic that the suggestion of a causal relationship between the presence of cats and the absence of birds (native or otherwise) is highly inappropriate (indeed, Hawkins scarcely investigates predation at all).

Among the key issues: Hawkins had no idea what the “cat” area of his study site was like before the cats were there; he merely assumes it was identical to the “no cat” area in terms of its fauna (though the two landscapes are actually quite different). It’s also interesting to note Hawkins’ emphasis on “the preference of ground feeding birds for the no-cat treatment” while downplaying the fact that five of the nine ground-feeding species included in the study showed no preference for either area. (For a more comprehensive analysis, please see my previous post on the subject.)

“…cats are the most important species in the life cycle of the parasite responsible for toxoplasmosis, and in 3 separate studies, most feral cats (62 percent to 80 percent) tested positive for toxoplasmosis.”

While cats are the “definitive host,” it’s important to note that “wild game can be a source of T. gondii infection in humans, cats, and other carnivores. Serologic data show that a significant number of feral pigs, bears, and cervids are exposed to T. gondii.” [9]

“Humans,” write Elmore et al., “usually become infected through ingestion of oocyst-contaminated soil and water, tissue cysts in undercooked meat, or congenitally. Because of their fastidious nature, the passing of non-infective oocysts, and the short duration of oocyst shedding, direct contact with cats is not thought to be a primary risk for human infection.” [10]

Toxoplasma gondii has been linked to the illness and death of marine life, primarily sea otters [11], prompting investigation into the possible role of free-roaming (both owned and feral) cats. [12, 13] It’s generally thought that oocysts (the mature, infective form of the parasite) are transferred from soil contaminated with infected feces to coastal waterways by way of freshwater run-off. [13]

However, a 2005 study found that 36 of 50 sea otters from coastal California were infected with the Type X strain of T. gondii [14], a type linked to wild felids (mountain lions and a bobcat, in this case), but not to domestic cats. [13] A recently published study from Germany seems to corroborate these findings. Herrmann et al. analyzed 18,259 fecal samples (all from pet cats) for T. gondii and found no Type X strain. (It’s interesting to note, too, that only 0.25% of the samples tested positive for T. gondii).[15]

[NOTE: Please see follow-up post for additional information about cats and T. gondii.]

“Predation by cats on birds has an economic impact of more than $17 billion dollars [sic] per year in the U.S. The estimated cost per bird is $30, based on literature citing that bird watchers spend $0.40 per bird observed, hunters spend $216 per bird shot, and bird rearers spend $800 per bird released.”

According to this bizarre form of accounting, hunters value an individual bird more than 500 times as much as a birdwatcher does—suggesting, it seems, that dead birds are far more valuable than live birds. This is the kind of estimate that can be developed only through university (or perhaps government) research efforts.

Public Indecency
“Stephen Vantassel, a wildlife damage project coordinator who worked on the study, said researchers were aware that some people would be ‘very offended that we offered any type of lethal control method.’ But he said the report was written for public consumption and wasn’t submitted to any science journals for publication.” [1]

For the record, Dr. Vantassel, I’m more offended by the way you’ve allowed such sloppy, grossly irresponsible work to pass for “research.” And the idea that such an undertaking is somehow acceptable because it’s meant for a mass audience is simply absurd!

Naturally, the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) embraced the report immediately, “with one official calling it ‘a must read for any community or government official thinking about what to do about feral cats.’” [1]

“‘Not surprisingly, the report validates everything American Bird Conservancy has been saying about the feral cat issue for many years—namely, TNR doesn’t work in controlling feral cat populations,’ Darin Schroeder, vice president of the Conservation Advocacy for American Bird Conservancy, said Tuesday.”

But validation requires far more than this report provides—beginning with a real interest in scientific inquiry and some basic critical thinking skills. And while we’re at it, a refresher in ethics wouldn’t hurt, either.

The timing was uncanny. Four days after my post “Inside Job,” Washington Post columnist Adrian Higgins reported incorrectly that two-thirds of pet cats are allowed outdoors. Higgins doesn’t mention where he got that figure, but considering the sources he used for the piece—including the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), The Wildlife Society, and Dauphiné and Cooper’s 2009 Partners in Flight paper—it’s not hard to sort out.

Ditto for his matter-of-fact assertion that “the cumulative effect on birds is significant, according to experts.” Higgins relies on Dauphiné and Cooper for estimates of both the number of “stray and out-and-out feral cats” (“there may be as many as 100 million such cats in the country”) and birds killed by free-roaming cats (“at least one billion birds are killed by cats annually, ‘and the actual number is probably much higher.’”). [1]

Higgins’ column appeared exactly one week after the release of Charles Seife’s book Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception. Proofiness, writes Seife, is “the art of using bogus mathematical arguments to prove something that you know in your heart is true—even when it’s not.” [2]

Many—perhaps most—of the scientific claims made by opponents of free-roaming cats/TNR are textbook cases of proofiness. Nevertheless, they are often accepted at face value by the media, which—simply by passing them along for public consumption—gives these assertions unwarranted credibility.

What Marra and his co-authors penned is an unapologetic call to action:

Proponents of TNR are well organized and push for TNR-friendly policies in communities and shelters around the United States, often with little opposition from the conservation biology and wildlife ecology communities… Regardless of why the scientific and management communities have remained relatively silent, it is imperative that we now begin speaking out. [2]

As I have argued, the silence that so frustrates Marra and the others may simply reflect the fact that so much of the work he and his colleagues defend is largely indefensible. Indeed, “What Conservation Biologists Can Do” is, in its own way, representative. Consider the authors’ comparison of TNR with hoarding:

The animal welfare community opposes “cat hoarding,” whereby people care for more pets than they can adequately support, because it is considered inhumane. Trap-neuter-return is essentially cat hoarding without walls. Considering that most communities have laws banning animal hoarding, we should consider the same standard for outdoor cats as those that are in a person’s home. [3]

But their interest in using the law to put a stop to TNR doesn’t end there. Marra and his colleagues continue:

…it may become incumbent upon us to take legal action against colonies and colony managers, particularly in areas that provide habitat for migratory birds or endangered species. [3]

The authors quote a 2003 article written by Linda Winter, the former director of the ABC’s Cats Indoors! campaign, for the Hawaii Audubon Society newsletter:

“…releasing cats into the wild and supporting feral cat colonies is a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act, as well as laws prohibiting animal abandonment.” (her emphasis, not mine) [4]

Winter—and by extension, Marra and his colleagues—are unambiguous on this point: TNR is a clear violation of both the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act. But, of course, law students don’t make legal decisions; that’s what we have courts for (which might explain why, years later, Travis Longcore and his Urban Wildlands Group took a rather different approach in their TNR-related lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles).

But back to Hatley—there’s another familiar name. In fact, I’d seen it right beside Marra’s earlier this year. See, Pamela Jo Hatley is one of the 10 co-authors of “What Conservation Biologists Can Do.”

So why didn’t the authors just cite Hatley’s work directly, rather than turning to Winter’s version of it? Simply put, Winter’s version is a better story—short and sweet, and brimming with certitude.

But if Marra and the others—Hatley included—wanted to distance themselves from the original, it’s understandable. Though her legal arguments are somewhat compelling, Hatley’s report is a minefield of misrepresentations, flawed estimates, and unsubstantiated claims where the science is concerned (e.g., extrapolating the Wisconsin Study to Florida, and then suggesting that “the actual number [of birds killed by cats in the state] may be much higher” [5]). In other words, more proofiness.

Getting Dirty
To read Higgins’ column in the Post, one gets the idea that he and Marra are merely fellow gardeners, perhaps having bumped into each other at the local nursery or hardware store. And that’s where the story began. It could be.

But there’s a sentence in “What Conservation Biologists Can Do” that’s been bothering me ever since I read Higgins’ piece:

Conservation biologists have just as much opportunity to make their points at local meetings, through the news media, and at outreach events as do TNR proponents. (emphasis mine) [2]

I have no idea whether Higgins and Marra knew each other before Higgins began work on his column, or how Higgins feels about cats. And I’m not one to go in for conspiracy theories, either.

What I am sure of is that Higgins—as a journalist—should have done his homework. He did not. (To be fair, Higgins did speak with Alley Cat Allies; but “equal time” is a poor substitute for accuracy.) And the consequences of his carelessly scattering a few figures around a column devoted to gardening are considerable: the seeds of proofiness!

Maybe readers don’t expect Higgins to know (or care, even) how many free-roaming cats there are in the U.S. Or how much time pet cats spend outdoors. Still, though, Higgins is an avid gardener—he, of all people, should be able to recognize bullshit.

* * *

SPECIAL THANKS to Louise Holton, founder of Alley Cat Rescue, who brought the Washington Post article (along with countless other news items over the past few months!) to my attention. She and Maggie Funkhouser, ACR’s Director of Communications and Public Relations, have become invaluable resources.

Results from the American Pet Products Association’s 2009­­–2010 National Pet Owners Survey suggest that cats in this country are spending more time indoors than ever before. Although the proportion of owners keeping their cats inside at night has remained relatively steady since 1998 (at approximately 66%), their has been a 14% increase in daytime confinement (from 56% to 64%) over the same period. [1]

It must be noted that owners were asked where they usually kept their cat(s), thereby raising some doubts about the accuracy of their responses. (There are actually two issues here: first is the level of truthfulness—did owners, intentionally or not, provide accurate information? But there is also the obvious ambiguity surrounding the term usually.) Nevertheless, these results correspond reasonably well with those of two earlier surveys: one commissioned by the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) in 1997, [2] the other conducted by Clancy et al. in 2001 [3] (the only other surveys I’ve found that investigated this issue specifically).

The ABC’s study (in which 250 cat owners participated in a telephone survey) indicated that “35% keep their cats indoors all of the time,” while “31% keep them indoors mostly with some outside access.” [2]

The 2001 survey included 168 cat owners, each of whom was part of the Feline Health Study, conducted at the Foster Hospital for Small Animals, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Tufts University. Sixty percent of these cats were “strictly indoor cats,” while 40% “had some level of outdoor access.” [3] Probing further, Clancy et al. discovered that nearly half of the cats with outdoor access were outside for two or fewer hours a day. And 29% of them were outdoors for less than an hour each day. [3]

Considering the differences in sampling (most notably the fact that participants in the 2001 survey were all clients of a veterinary hospital, whereas APPA survey results for 2000 indicate that 27% of cat owners did not visit the vet in the previous 12 months), and the inherent uncertainty surrounding the terms mostly, usually, and some, the results of these three surveys are remarkably similar.

Counting Cats
Such findings are critical for developing accurate estimates of the number of birds killed by cats (assuming a reasonable level of accuracy is achievable, given the complexity of the issue). Simply put, cats that don’t go outside can’t kill birds.

Recognizing this, some researchers have inflated their figures for cats allowed outdoors. [4–6]

Dauphiné and Cooper, [6] for instance, cite the APPA’s 2007–2008 survey when referring to the number of owned cats in the U.S., but either ignored or overlooked its findings about confinement: 63% of owners reported that they kept their cat(s) indoors during the day, 70% during the night. (It’s also possible that the authors consulted only the APPA’s online summary, which probably didn’t include this information.)

By contrast, Dauphiné and Cooper claim that 65% of pet cats “are free-ranging outdoor cats for at least some portion of the day,” [6] citing not the APPA survey, but Linda Winter’s 2004 paper, “Trap-neuter-release programs: the reality and the impacts” (which can be downloaded here). Indeed, Winter, the former director of the ABC’s Cats Indoors! campaign, had suggested as much—misrepresenting the findings of a study commissioned by her own organization:

“A 1997 nationwide random telephone survey indicated that 66% of cat owners let their cats outdoors some or all of the time.” [7]

Counting Birds
Of course, such estimates do not necessarily relate directly to population impacts. The predation may be largely compensatory, for example; and there are source-sink dynamics to be considered as well.

Nevertheless, researchers persist—more often, it seems, in pursuit of staggering, media-friendly figures than a better understanding of what’s actually going on (e.g., Dauphiné and Cooper’s bumper-sticker-worthy “one billion birds”). As a result, the scientific literature is plagued with some rather spectacular failures where predation numbers are concerned (e.g., The Wisconsin Study, Christopher Lepczyk’s dissertation, Carol Fiore’s thesis, etc.).

* * *

The surprising level of agreement among the three “outdoor access” studies provides researchers a rare opportunity to agree among themselves. Which, in turn, could move us closer to an honest debate of the larger issues—arguing about which action is most appropriate, for instance, rather than about whose numbers are most valid.

Despite how results of these surveys have been—as recently as last year—overlooked, ignored, and misrepresented, I remain cautiously optimistic. As Patronek has suggested, “predation of songbirds tends to be noticed because it takes place during the day.” [8] It’s time predation research received the same kind of visibility. Sunlight, after all, is said to be the best of disinfectants.

6. Dauphiné, N. and Cooper, R.J., Impacts of Free-ranging Domestic Cats (Felis catus) on birds in the United States: A review of recent research with conservation and management recommendations, in Fourth International Partners in Flight Conference: Tundra to Tropics. 2009. p. 205–219.

7. Winter, L., “Trap-neuter-release programs: the reality and the impacts.”Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. 2004. 225(9): p. 1369-1376.

The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) recently made available online (via downloadable PDFs) several of its articles related to free-roaming cats/TNR. Although abstracts have been online for some time, access to the full text for these papers has generally required either a subscription to the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association or access to a subscribing library.

Among the articles that make up this edition of AVMA Collections are several I’ve referred to over the past few months—including two I’ve been quite critical of: one by Linda Winter, former director of the American Bird Conservancy’s Cats Indoors! campaign, and another by David Jessup.

The AVMA and Free-roaming Cats
Although “the AVMA encourages and supports actions to eliminate the problem of free-roaming abandoned and feral cats,” its policy regarding Free-roaming Abandoned and Feral Cats is, it must be said, ambivalent at best. The organization “neither endorses nor opposes appropriately managed cat colony programs,” for example. When it comes to the “treatment” of cats not in managed colonies, however, the AVMA is quite clear—as is the likely fate of these cats (despite the policy’s euphemistic language):

“The AVMA strongly supports reducing the number of unowned free-roaming abandoned and feral cats through humane capture (with placement in homes where appropriate) by local health departments, humane societies, and animal control agencies. All free-roaming abandoned and feral cats that are not in managed colonies should be removed from their environment and treated in the same manner as other abandoned and stray animals in accord with local and state ordinances.”

Another worrisome aspect of the AVMA’s policy is its matter-of-fact assertion that “these free-roaming abandoned and feral cats also represent a significant factor in the mortality of hundreds of millions of birds, small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fish” (the wording of which matches almost exactly a claim made by the American Bird Conservancy).

* * *

As with all large, politically-minded organizations, policy change at the AVMA is likely to be a slow process. Perhaps, though, by making this collection of articles available to the general public, they have, knowingly or not, given that process a nudge. Regardless of its intent—which seems to consider only a veterinary professional readership—the AVMA’s move may help foster a better-informed, more engaged debate among those outside the profession.

All of this got me thinking—not of Beckett or the D.A.’s Office, but of FLOCK. The organization is still around (although I’m told the leadership has changed). And a few months ago there were reports—which I have been unable to confirm—that FLOCK might be establishing a new sanctuary, this time in neighboring Clark County.

Another FLOCK sanctuary would be a recipe for disaster, and not just because of that organization’s abysmal record. Many cat sanctuaries are overcrowded, underfunded, and—lacking any kind of contingency plan, as is often the case—prone to collapse. And they can be used to cover up institutional hoarding.

“Recently, another option has become available: enclosed sanctuaries where cats can live out their lives protected from weather and most injury. Large and well-known cat sanctuaries exist in Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Virginia, and several places in California. Others are being built and operated by individuals and organizations on small and moderate scales similar to other sanctuaries, as described by Winter. This is happening simply because people sense it is the right thing to do. Hopefully, we can all agree this is one thing that truly serves the welfare of both cats and wildlife.” [2]

However, this is the same article in which Jessup alleges—without so much as a single reference to support him—that there are “60–100 million feral and abandoned cats in the United States.” [2] Clearly, there isn’t nearly enough sanctuary space for the number of cats; in fact, sanctuaries are “another option” for only a tiny fraction of the stray, abandoned, and feral cats out there (even when more accurate estimates are considered).

Indeed, in their contribution to AVMA’s 2004 Animal Welfare Forum, Julie Levy and Cynda Crawford suggest as much: “most sanctuary programs that permanently house feral cats are filled to capacity almost immediately after opening.” [5]

“A number of sanctuaries are forced to close their doors every year due to insufficient funds or an inability to properly care for the cats in the existing confined space.”

FLOCK was a case study, demonstrating in horrific detail that the sanctuary option—even when it’s available—is not always in the best interest of the cats. As one of my Best Friends contacts who was involved in the FLOCK clean-up effort told me, “I’ve got one of the Pahrump cats… I would rather see that cat back on the streets of Vegas, looking for food in Dumpsters, than be where they were at FLOCK.”

Indeed, the FLOCK story is all too familiar to people involved in such large-scale rescue efforts. Consider some of the more dramatic—and therefore “story-worthy”—incidents in recent years:

Voice of the Animals Sanctuary (Blanchard, ID, 2006)
“Disaster responders from The HSUS, working alongside the Idaho Humane Society, found more than 400 cats, and a number of dogs, goats and chickens. Many were in extremely poor health and had to be euthanized.”

“The animals were housed in and around nine dilapidated mobile homes on the property, according to published reports. Inside the trailers, investigators found that the walls were soaked in urine and the floors caked with feces and filth. Veterinarian and IHS executive director Dr. Jeff Rosenthal described the cats as all being ‘infested with fleas and ear mites. The majority were also in an emaciated state and suffered with upper respiratory illnesses, chronic diarrhea and abscesses,’ among other ailments.” (source: www.Pet-Abuse.com)

Tiger Ranch (Tarentum, PA, 2008)
“All told, 380 living cats and 106 dead ones were discovered during a police raid at Tiger Ranch in Frazer Township, which owner and operator Linda Bruno billed as a pet adoption center and Hospice. Since then, many of the cats have died.”

“‘It’s a death camp,’ said [Howard] Nelson [director of the Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania SPCA, which orchestrated the raid], speaking by cell phone as he helped gather emaciated and diseased cats crammed into trailers and other outbuildings across the 30-acre property. ‘I see cats that can’t walk, and dead cats in litter boxes and lying by food bowls.’” (source: www.Pet-Abuse.com)

Cats with No Name (Pine Grove Township, PA, 2009)
“SPCA volunteer Beth Hall said the condition the 148 cats and 10 other animals were found in was unspeakable. ‘Our opinion is that it was heinous. In my opinion, it was like a kitty concentration camp,’ she said. ‘We just don’t understand.’ Mary Ellen Smith, president of the Steinert SPCA board, said the animals were subjected to ‘obvious cruelty and neglect.’”

In addition, the couple responsible was “accused of stockpiling donated cat food and reselling some of it at auctions to finance drug binges while leaving dozens of animals to go hungry.” (source: www.Pet-Abuse.com)

10th Life Sanctuary (LaBelle, FL, 2009)
“The final statistics tell a story of success and sadness. The closure of the 10th Life Sanctuary represents one of the largest cat rescues in US history. A total of 110 cats were euthanized in the first days of medical triage due to critical medical illnesses, including 17 that were euthanized immediately following the unannounced inspection. Of the remaining 485 cats, 75 of the ferals were euthanized when new placements could not be found for them. This 15% euthanasia rate for the savable cats is in stark contrast to the vast majority of large-scale feline cruelty impoundments in which mass euthanasia is the most common outcome.” (source: Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program, University of Florida)

* * *

To be clear, I’m not opposed to sanctuaries as such. Indeed, I’m a supporter of Best Friends and Shadow Cats Rescue. What I am opposed to is sanctuaries being oversold—generally to an audience that has no knowledge of such matters—as a viable alternative to TNR. To suggest anything of the sort is, at best, disingenuous. Sanctuaries are no more an alternative to TNR than zoos are to the protection of endangered species.

4. Dauphiné, N. and Cooper, R.J., Impacts of Free-ranging Domestic Cats (Felis catus) on birds in the United States: A review of recent research with conservation and management recommendations, in Fourth International Partners in Flight Conference: Tundra to Tropics. 2009. p. 205–219

According to an AP story posted on MSNBC, city officials in Barre, VT, are considering a leash law for cats—effectively prohibiting them from roaming. Such stories tend to vary only in their specifics; quotes from embattled citizens, and feline references that are more dismissive than clever (e.g., in Barre, the debate “sparked a hissing match”) are pretty much a given. And, more often than not, there’s a statement from the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) about the threat free-roaming cats pose to wildlife. This story was no exception:

“Scientists estimate that free-roaming cats kill hundreds of millions of birds, small mammals, reptiles and amphibians each year,” the Virginia-based American Bird Conservancy, which runs a “Cats Indoors!” campaign, says on its website. “Cat predation is an added stress to wildlife populations already struggling to survive habitat loss, pollution, pesticides, and other human impacts.”

Although I don’t know anybody who would argue with ABC’s second point, that first one bears closer inspection.

“The latest estimates are that there are about . . . 160 million feral cats [nationwide] . . . It’s conservatively estimated that they kill about 500 million birds a year.”

Late last year, an article in Audubon Magazine had published nearly identical figures, citing ABC as its source. [1]

The feral cat estimate comes from a conference paper written by Nico Dauphiné and Robert J. Cooper, available for download via the ABC website. When I pressed Holmer about the authors’ “creative accounting,” he backed off, assuring me that ABC’s materials “should now say”:

There are currently 88 million pet cats in the U.S. according to a pet trade association, and that number is growing. In addition, it is estimated that there may be 60–100 million free-ranging feral cats in the U.S., and that these cats may collectively kill more than one million birds each day. Reducing this mortality even a small amount could potentially save millions of birds each year.

I never received a reply, though, to my inquiries about that “more than one million birds each day” claim. Such incidents are, unfortunately, not uncommon; when it comes to assertions about cat predation and its impact on wildlife, ABC has a rich—and rather shameful—history.

Cats Indoors!
Holmer’s comment to the L.A. Times is just one example of ABC’s concerted effort to use the (largely unquestioning) media in getting their message out. Last year, at a news conference about the “The U.S. State of the Birds” report, ABC’s Darin Schroeder told the press, “education is urgently needed to make the public aware of the toll of pet cats.” Which is precisely what ABC’s Cats Indoors! campaign—launched in 1997—aims to do.

The question is, what kind of education is the public getting from ABC?

A 1997 report by ABC claimed, “extensive studies of the feeding habits of domestic, free-roaming cats… show that approximately… 20 to 30 percent [of their diet] are birds.” [cited in 2] In fact, as Ellen Perry Berkeley points out in her book, TNR Past Present and Future: A history of the trap-neuter-return movement, the 20–30% figure was not based on “extensive studies” at all. [2]ABC’s Linda Winter, writing to Berkeley, cited just three sources. Two of them—the now-classic “English village” study by Peter Churcher and John Lawton, and the “Wisconsin Study” by John Coleman and Stanley Temple—have been widely discredited. [3–5] And the third, Mike Fitzgerald’s contribution to “Diet of domestic cats and their impact on prey populations,” [6] was misinterpreted and/or misrepresented by ABC. (As Berkeley notes, Fitzgerald’s data “would put birds, as a portion of the diet of cats, at roughly 7 to 10.5 percent—nowhere near the ‘20 to 30 percent’ figures unleashed on the unscientific public by ABC!” [2])

Winter, director of Cats Indoors! (assuming she’s still at ABC; their website does not list her among the staff), and ABC president George Fenwick were among those thanked “for helpful and constructive reviews” in the Acknowledgements section of Christopher Lepczyk’s 2003 paper, “Landowners and cat predation across rural-to-urban landscapes.” As I detailed in my previous post, Lepczyk’s study is flawed both in terms of its method and analysis, and his predation estimates are highly inflated as a result. The fact that Winter and Fenwick were involved in such as study—at any level—raises questions about ABC’s credibility (and its possible influence on research outcomes).

In 2004, Winter misrepresented the results of a survey commissioned by ABC. In “Trap-neuter-release programs: The reality and the impacts,” published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, she suggested, “66% of cat owners let their cats outdoors some or all of the time.” [7]In fact, the survey indicated that “35% keep their cats indoors all of the time” and “31% keep them indoors mostly with some outside access.” [9] While Winter’s claim isn’t exactly untrue, it certainly paints a very different picture: rather than one-third, two-thirds of cats are free-roaming. Which, apparently, is exactly how Dauphiné and Cooper read it, combining this with an inflated figure for the number of feral cats to come up with their estimate of “117–157 million free-ranging cats in the United States.” [8] (It’s difficult not to see a certain coziness here: Dauphiné and Cooper citing Winter’s “interpretation” of her own survey results, and Holmer’s reliance on Dauphiné and Cooper’s conference paper.

To this day, ABC refers to the highly-criticized Wisconsin Study in its brochure Domestic Cat Predation on Birds and Other Wildlife: “Researchers… estimated that rural free-roaming cats kill at least 7.8 million and perhaps as many as 217 million birds a year in Wisconsin. Suburban and urban cats add to that toll.” [9]And, despite Berkeley’s efforts to untangle their erroneous dietary figures, ABC has backed off only slightly: “In an ongoing, but unpublished, study of cat prey items including stomach contents, scat analysis, observations of kills, and prey remains, birds were 19.6% of 1,976 prey captured by 78 outdoor cats (Temple, S.A, Univ. of WI, personal communication, 1/22/04).”

Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for keeping cats indoors. But what about the feral and stray cats out there—what happens to them? Here, ABC doesn’t seem to have a lot of answers. At least not any they’re willing to be up-front about.

In fact, by disseminating information that is at best misleading—and often, just plain wrong—ABC is doing whatever it can to shape policy in such a way that many of these cats will, one way or another, be killed. Intentional or not, Cats Indoors! has become a kind of Trojan horse for those determined to eliminate all free-roaming cats. Attention can very quickly shift from the impact of a proposed leash law, for example, to the “cat problem” in general.

Although it’s packaged as sound advice for cat owners, the Cats Indoors! campaign has probably had a far greater (deadly) impact on unowned cats than on pet cats.

6. Fitzgerald, B.M., Diet of domestic cats and their impact on prey populations, in The Domestic cat: The biology of its behaviour, D.C. Turner and P.P.G. Bateson, Editors. 1988, Cambridge University Press. p. 123–147.

7. Winter, L., “Trap-neuter-release programs: the reality and the impacts.”Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. 2004. 225(9): p. 1369-1376.

8. Dauphiné, N. and Cooper, R.J., Impacts of Free-ranging Domestic Cats (Felis catus) on birds in the United States: A review of recent research with conservation and management recommendations, in Fourth International Partners in Flight Conference: Tundra to Tropics. 2009. p. 205–219.

“…it may be that conservation biologists and wildlife ecologists believe the issue of feral cats has already been studied enough and that the work speaks for itself, suggesting that no further research is needed.”

In fact, “the work”—taken as a whole—is neither as rigorous nor as conclusive as Lepczyk et al. suggest. And far too much of it is plagued by exaggeration, misrepresentations, errors, and obvious bias. In Part 5 of this series, I critiqued Cole Hawkins’ 1998 PhD dissertation. Here, I’m going to untangle some of Lepczyk’s own PhD work: Landowners and cat predation across rural-to-urban landscapes, published in 2003.

The Study
In this study, surveys were distributed across three southeastern Michigan landscapes (rural, suburban, and urban) corresponding to established breeding bird survey (BBS) routes. [2] Among the survey questions:

“If you or members of your household own cats that are allowed access to the outside, approximately how many dead or injured birds a week do all the cats bring in during the spring and summer months (April through August) (0, 1, 2–3, 4–5, 6–7, 8–9, 10–15, 16–20, more than 20)?”

“Across the three landscapes there were ~800 to ~3100 cats, which kill between ~16,000 and ~47,000 birds during the breeding season, resulting in a minimum of ~1 bird killed/km/day.”

Increasing Uncertainty
How do Lepczyk and his collaborators arrive at these figures? It’s not entirely clear, actually. Despite numerous attempts, I’ve been unable to follow all of their calculations. However, using their data, I developed my own estimate: 1,119 outdoor cats, 511 of which were reported to be successful hunters.

Using this figure, I then summed across all three landscapes the birds killed or injured, plus those killed or injured by non-respondents’ hunting cats (based on the ratio of hunters to outdoor cats owned by respondents, or about 50%). The resulting estimate is 15,856 birds killed over the 22-week breeding season—close to the low estimate suggested by Lepczyk et al., but just a third of their maximum.

So, why the discrepancy?

One reason is that, at least for some of their estimates, Lepczyk et al. assumed that every landowner who didn’t respond to the survey owned outdoor cats. This, despite their survey results, which indicated that only about one-third of landowners fell into this category.

But the authors go further, generating predation estimates based on pure speculation, specifically that “non-respondents have 150% the number of outdoor cats as respondents.” [2] It should be noted that Lepczyk et al. also ran another scenario in which non-respondents had half the outdoor cats as did respondents—but, again, in both cases they assume that every non-respondent owned outdoor cats.

As a result of this approach, the authors end up in some strange territory: the estimated number of cats owned by non-respondents (based on the assumptions described above) far exceeds the number owned by respondents—by more than a two-to-one margin, in some cases. If the greatest impacts are going to be attributable to non-respondents, then what’s the point of doing the survey in the first place? There are accepted methods by which one can manage uncertainty—statistical analysis, confidence intervals, and the like. What Lepczyk et al. have done serves just one purpose: to inflate apparent predation rates.

Skewed Distributions
In addition to the flaws described above, there are some fundamental errors in the way the authors handle their data. Like so many others, Lepczyk et al. ignore the fact that their data is not normally distributed:

Lepczyk et al. use the average number of birds killed/cat to calculate the total number of bids killed for each of the three landscapes. As I discussed previously), this is a highly positively skewed distribution—using a simple average, therefore, greatly overestimates the cats’ impact (by as much as a factor of two).

A similar error is made when the authors use an average to describe the number of outdoor cats owned by each landowner. Again, because this is a skewed distribution, their use of a simple average exaggerates the extent of predation.

The two inflated figures described in (1) and (2) are multiplied together, further inflating estimated predation rates.

Barratt has suggested that “median numbers of prey estimated or observed to be caught per year are approximately half the mean values, and are a better representation of the average predation by house cats based on these data.” [3] Accounting for the first point alone, then, my estimate is reduced to 8,000 birds killed over the 22-week breeding season.

Accounting for the second point is somewhat trickier. For one thing, we don’t know what constitutes an outdoor cat here—the survey simply asked respondents if they owned cats “that are allowed access to the outdoors.” [2] However, we do know the results of a 2003 survey, which indicated that nearly half of the cats with outdoor access were outside for two or fewer hours a day. And 29% were outdoors for less than an hour each day. [4] Although these figures almost certainly reflect owners in urban and suburban landscapes more than those in rural landscapes, it’s clear that a simple yes-or-no question on the subject is insufficient. Indeed, such a question will invariably overestimate the number of “outdoor cats”—which in turn overestimates predation rates.

This, coupled with the error inherent in using a simple average, pushes predation estimates lower. And the third point reduces those estimates further still. Taken together, these corrections could put my estimate closer to 4,000 birds. More important, the upper estimate proposed by Lepczyk et al.—47,000 birds—could easily be 10 times too high.

The Small Print
Despite their inflated figures, Lepczyk et al. suggest—rather absurdly, in light of the substantial flaws described above—that perhaps their estimates are actually too conservative:

“One caveat to our study is that landowners may have underestimated the number of cats they allow access to the outside. Such a result was found in a similar study of landowners in Wisconsin (Coleman and Temple, 1993).” [1] (Note: After reviewing “Rural Residents’ Free-Ranging Domestic Cats: A Survey,” [5] I’ve found no evidence of such a result.)

“… we found that a very common volunteered response among landowners that had no outdoor cats was that either their neighbors owned outdoor cats or that feral cats were present in the vicinity of their land… [suggesting] that at least some landowners under reported or chose not to report the number of outdoor cats they owned.”

But what about their reports of birds brought home killed or injured—how trustworthy were those? After all, the survey (mailed during the first week of October) asked respondents to recall the number of birds their cat(s) brought home April through August. Surely, there was a lot of guesswork involved. In fact, David Barratt found this kind of guesswork to overestimate predation rates. In a study published five years prior to “Landowners and Cat Predation,” Barratt concluded, “predicted rates of predation greater than about ten prey per year generally over-estimated predation observed.” [3]

The two studies cannot be compared directly for a number of reasons, but by way of comparison, the average predation rate used by Lepczyk et al. is approximately 31 birds/cat for the 22-week breeding season. Using Barratt’s work, in which the “heaviest” six continuous months correspond to about 58% of yearly prey totals, [6] I converted this to a yearly rate of 53 birds/cat/year. Barratt has shown that the actual predation rate, at this level, is less than half the rate predicted by cat owners. In other words, predictions of 50 birds/year generally correspond to catches closer to 25 birds/year.

While Lepczyk et al. emphasize the potential for under-estimating predation levels, they never consider the risk of over-estimating these levels—or their most obvious potential source of error: landowners’ recollections of birds killed. The authors question respondents’ reports of outdoor cats, but accept without question their reports of birds injured or killed over the previous six-month period. And, as Barratt indicated, such reports can be inflated by a factor of two or more!

Something else I find troubling comes, of all places, from the Acknowledgements section. Among those thanked “for helpful and constructive reviews” are American Bird Conservancy (ABC) president George Fenwick and Linda Winter, director of ABC’s Cats Indoors! campaign. It’s not clear how Fenwick and Winter contributed to the final paper, but their involvement on any level raises questions about possible bias. Certainly, Winter has credibility issues when it comes to “research” about the impact of free-roaming cats on birds, as I’ve already described (see also pp. 18–24 of TNR Past present and future: A history of the trap-neuter-return movement [7]).

* * *

The same year Lepczyk’s paper was published, the American Veterinary Medicine Association held an Animal Welfare Forum “devoted to the management of abandoned and feral cats.” [8] In attendance were more than 200 veterinarians, animal control officials, wildlife conservationists, and animal advocates—each with a different perspective on feral cats in general and TNR in particular.

In welcoming this diverse group, then-President-Elect Bonnie Beaver recognized the range of contentious issues before them:

“We will not always agree, but we will come away with increased knowledge and a renewed commitment to work for the welfare of all the animals with which we share the earth” [8]

While I tend to share Beaver’s optimism, I think the debate is hurt—if not derailed entirely—by the publication of research aimed not at increasing our collective knowledge, but rather at supporting a particular position. Like Cole Hawkins’ dissertation, “Landowners and Cat Predation” is, at best, an interesting pilot study for subsequent work. And yet, it’s widely—and uncritically—cited in the feral cat/TNR literature. Longcore et al., for example, refer to it as “evidence [indicating] that cats can play an important role in fluctuations of bird populations,” [9] despite the fact that Lepczyk et al. don’t actually address the issue of bird populations at all. More recently, Dauphiné and Cooper use the inflated predation rate suggested by Lepczyk et al. (along with rates proposed by other researchers) to arrive at their “billion birds” figure. [10]

The method employed in “Landowners and Cat Predation”—asking owners of cats to recall the number and species of birds over the previous six-month period—invites overestimation from the very outset. Lepczyk et al. then inflate these numbers through both careless (e.g., using averages to describe skewed data) and deliberate (e.g., assuming all non-respondents owned cats—perhaps 50% more than respondents did) means. Rather than getting us any closer to the truth about cat predation, this study only obscured it further.

Worse, it’s been packaged and sold—and subsequently “bought”—as rigorous science, thereby giving it an undeserved legitimacy. Such efforts are impediments to knowledge and understanding—and therefore, to progress.

10. Dauphiné, N. and Cooper, R.J., Impacts of Free-ranging Domestic Cats (Felis catus) on birds in the United States: A review of recent research with conservation and management recommendations, in Fourth International Partners in Flight Conference: Tundra to Tropics. 2010. p. 205–219.

“…it may be that conservation biologists and wildlife ecologists believe the issue of feral cats has already been studied enough and that the work speaks for itself, suggesting that no further research is needed.”

In fact, “the work”—taken as a whole—is neither as rigorous nor as conclusive as Lepczyk et al. suggest. And far too much of it is plagued by exaggeration, misrepresentations, errors, and obvious bias. In Part 3 of this series, I discussed the distinction between compensatory and additive predation. Here, I’ll focus on how feral cat/TNR researchers often misuse averages to characterize skewed distributions, and how that error overestimates the impact of free-roaming cats on wildlife.

Something’s Askew
When a data set is skewed, it is inappropriate to use the mean, or average, as a measure of central tendency. The mean should be used only when the data set can be considered normal—the familiar bell curve. As Woods et al put it:

“the simple average number of animals brought home is not a useful measure of central tendency because of the skewed frequency distribution of the numbers of prey items brought home…” [2]

Studies of cat predation routinely reveal a positively skewed distribution; a few cats are responsible for many kills, while many of the cats kill few, if any, prey. So when researchers use the mean to calculate the total number of prey killed by cats in a particular area, they overestimate the cats’ impact.

How common is this? Very [see, for example, 3-9]. Of the many cat predation studies I’ve read, only a few [2, 10, 11] properly account for the skewed nature of this distribution. And others [12-17] often take these inflated figures at face value—as evidence of the impact cats have on wildlife. Published repeatedly, the erroneous estimates take on an undeserved legitimacy.

The proper method for handling skewed distributions involves data transformations, the details of which I won’t go into here. The important point is this: in the case of a positively skewed distribution, the back-transformed mean will always be less than the simple mean of the same data set.

Big Deal
Depending on the particular distribution, the difference between the simple mean and the back-transformed mean can be considerable. Let’s use the 2003 study by Woods et al. [2] to illustrate. In the case of mammals killed and returned home by pet cats, the back-transformed mean was 28.3% less than the simple mean. Or, put another way, the simple mean would have overestimated the number of mammals killed by 39.5%. Similarly, when all prey items were totaled (as depicted in the illustration above), the simple mean would have overestimated the total number off all prey (mammals, birds, herpetofauna, and “others”) by 46.9%.

On the other hand, the figures for birds appear to break the rule mentioned above. In this case, the back-transformed mean (4.1) is actually a bit higher than the simple mean (4.0). How can this be? In order to log-transform the data set, Woods et al. had to first eliminate all the instances where cats returned home no prey—you can’t take the logarithm of 0. So, they were actually working with two data sets. Now, the second data set—which includes only those cats that returned at least one prey item—is also highly positively skewed. As a point of reference, its simple mean was approximately 5.6 birds/cat, which, compared to the back-transformed mean, is an overestimation of 37.5%.

By now, it should be apparent that log-transformed means have another important advantage over simple means: because you have to eliminate those zeros from the data set, you are forced to focus only on the cats that returned prey home—which, of course, is the whole point of such studies! And in the case of this study, Woods et al. found that 20–30% of cats brought home either no birds or no mammals. And 8.6% of the cats brought home no prey at all over the course of the study.

Transforming a data set (and then back-transforming its mean) is simpler than it sounds, but Barratt offers a useful alternative, rule-of-thumb method (one echoed by Fitzgerald and Turner [18]):

“…median numbers of prey estimated or observed to be caught per year are approximately half the mean values, and are a better representation of the average predation by house cats based on these data.” [10]

So, whereas Dauphiné and Cooper (and others) suggest increasing such estimates by factors of two and three (“predation rates measured through prey returns may represent one half to less than one third of what pet cats actually kill…” [14]), they should, in fact, be reducing them by half.

Cat Ownership
There are other instances in which simple averages are used to describe similarly skewed distributions—with similar results. That is, they overestimate a particular characteristic—and not in the cats’ favor.

Cat ownership, for example, is not a normal distribution. Many people own one or two cats; a few people own many cats. This is precisely what Lepczyk et al. found in their 2003 study:

“The total number of free-ranging cats across all landscapes was 656, ranging from 1 to 30 per landowner…” [6]

In fact, about 113 (I’m estimating from the histogram printed in the report) of those landowners owned just one cat apiece. About 70 of them owned two cats. Only one—maybe two—owned 30 cats. And yet, Lepczyk et al. calculate an average of 2.59 cats/landowner (i.e., 656 cats/253 landowners who allow their cats outdoors), thereby substantially overestimating cat ownership—and, in turn, predation rates (which calculations are based upon the average number of cats/landowner).

Lepczyk et al. are not the only ones to make this mistake; several other researchers have done the same. [4, 5, 7-9]

Outdoor Access
The amount of time cats spend outdoors is also highly positively skewed, as is apparent from the 2003 survey conducted by Clancy, Moore, and Bertone. [19] Their work showed that nearly half of the cats with outdoor access were outside for two or fewer hours a day. And 29% were outdoors for less than an hour each day.

Among those researchers to overlook the skewed nature of this distribution are Kays and DeWan, who calculate an average of 8.35 hours/day. This greatly overestimates potential predation, and leads them to conclude—erroneously—that the actual number of prey killed by cats was “3.3 times greater than the rate estimated from prey brought home,” [9] as was discussed previously.

Compound Errors
Clearly, these errors are substantial—in some cases, doubling the apparent impact of cats on wildlife. Of course the errors are even more significant when one inflated figure is multiplied by another—as when Lepczyk et al. [6] multiply the average number of prey items returned by the average number of outdoor cats per owner. The resulting predation figures may well be four times greater than they should be! (Actually, there are additional problems with the authors’ predation estimates, which I’ll address in a future post).

* * *

The fact that such a fundamental mistake—one a student couldn’t get away with in a basic statistics course—is made so often is shocking. The fact that such errors slip past journal reviewers is inexcusable.

14. Dauphiné, N. and Cooper, R.J., Impacts of Free-ranging Domestic Cats (Felis catus) on birds in the United States: A review of recent research with conservation and management recommendations, in Fourth International Partners in Flight Conference: Tundra to Tropics. 2010. p. 205–219

“…it may be that conservation biologists and wildlife ecologists believe the issue of feral cats has already been studied enough and that the work speaks for itself, suggesting that no further research is needed.”

In fact, “the work”—taken as a whole—is neither as rigorous nor as conclusive as Lepczyk et al. suggest. And far too much of it is plagued by exaggerations, misrepresentations, errors, and obvious bias. For the next few posts, I’m going to present a sampling of its more serious flaws, beginning with how some researchers “reinterpret” work of others to suit their own purposes.

Tell It Like It Is
Studies of cat predation frequently cite the work of William G. George, who, in 1974, published a paper documenting his meticulous observations of the hunting behavior of three cats on his southern Illinois farm. “The results,” wrote George, “established a basis for examining the possibility that cat predation may result in depleted winter populations of microtine rodents and other prey of Red-tailed Hawks, Marsh Hawks, and American Kestrels.” [2]

Thirty years later, David A. Jessup interpreted things rather differently, giving George’s work an additional—and unwarranted—degree of certainty. Gone are the doubts that George expressed—first, regarding the impact of cat predation on rodent and other prey populations; second, regarding the relationship between these populations and the raptors that feed on them. For Jessup—who offers no additional evidence—it’s all very straightforward: “Feral cats also indirectly kill native predators by removing their food base.” [3]

More recently, Guttilla and Stapp seem to prefer Jessup’s take: “Human-subsidized cats… can spill over into less densely populated wildland areas where they reduce prey for native predators (George 1974).” [4]

If any additional work has been done on the subject (surely there are more cats in the area these days; how are the voles and raptors faring?), it seems to have gone unnoticed. Instead, Jessup, Guttilla, and Stapp (and others, too, no doubt) have simply rewritten George’s conclusion to suit their own purposes. Perhaps their version makes for a better story, but it’s rather poor science.

At the risk of drawing too many parallels between the two papers, I think the same can be said for Coleman and Temple’s infamous “Wisconsin Study.” (On the other hand, it does serve a useful purpose as a red flag.) Actually, as Goldstein et al. point out, Coleman and Temple’s paper was never peer-reviewed (not necessarily a deal-breaker in my book, but such publications do warrant additional scrutiny), but achieved its mythical status by being cited ad nauseam in peer-reviewed journals, as well as the mainstream media.

Does anybody actually believe the numbers suggested by Coleman and Temple? Stanley Temple (one of the co-authors of the recent anti-feral cat/TNR comment in Conservation Biology) himself admitted their published figures “aren’t actual data; that was just our projection to show how bad it might be.” [5]

I don’t think Longcore et al. [6] or the editors at Conservation Biology put much stock in the Wisconsin Study—so why continue to publish “projections” that have been so thoroughly discredited? Because doing so strengthens their case, at least among those who don’t know any better—especially people outside the scientific community, including many journalists, policy makers, judges, and the general public.

In their recent comment, Lepczyk et al. suggest that conservation biologists and wildlife ecologists “look to the evolutionary biology community” [1] for an example of how to influence policy:

“When local policies or regulations are put forth that promote the teaching of creationism or intelligent design, the evolutionary biologists have responded in force from across the nation and world.” [1]

Let’s set aside for the moment all the baggage associated with their analogy. My question is this: Is the evolutionary biology community still publishing bogus “projections” from 13 years ago? I doubt it.

Check Your Premises
In their recent paper (available for download via the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) website), Dauphiné and Cooper arrive at their absurd figure of “117–157 million free-ranging cats in the United States,” [7] in part, by way of Jessup’s “estimated 60 to 100 million feral and abandoned cats in the United States.” [3]

So where does Jessup’s figure come from? We have no idea—there’s no citation. And Jessup is no authority on the subject—having conducted no studies or reviews of studies that quantify the feral cat population. What’s more, his “estimation” is among the highest figures published. Yet this is the shaky foundation upon which Dauphiné and Cooper attempt to build their subsequent argument.

The authors then add to the (dubious) number of feral cats the proportion of pet cats allowed outdoors. They refer to a 2004 paper by Linda Winter, director of ABC’s Cats Indoors! campaign, in which it was reported, “A 1997 nationwide random telephone survey indicated that 66% of cat owners let their cats outdoors some or all of the time.” [8]

That’s an interesting way to put it—Winter makes it sound like two-thirds of pet cats are essentially outdoor cats. But the survey—commissioned by ABC!—actually indicates that “35% keep their cats indoors all of the time” and “31% keep them indoors mostly with some outside access.” [9] The difference in wording is subtle, and hampered by imprecision—it all comes down to the meaning of some.

Winter’s 2004 paper implies that there are twice as many outdoor pet cats as was indicated in the original survey—an interpretation Dauphiné and Cooper seem to embrace. Had they looked further—and to a less biased source—they might have been able to get a better handle on the degree of outdoor access. For example: a 2003 survey conducted by Clancy, Moore, and Bertone [10] revealing that nearly half of the cats with outdoor access were outside for two or fewer hours a day. And 29% were outdoors for less than an hour each day.

Do these “part-timers” have the same impact on wildlife as feral cats? Dauphiné and Cooper would have us believe they do.

[Note: For a closer look at the flaws in Dauphiné and Cooper’s paper, download “One Billion Birds,”by Laurie D. Goldstein.]

The lesson? Credible research begins with a solid foundation; a weak foundation—one plagued with unsubstantiated claims—on the other hand, leads to pseudoscience.

When All Else Fails, Look It Up
Though this would seem to be utterly obvious, it apparently bears repeating: Don’t cite work you haven’t actually read.

Isn’t this emphasized in all graduate (indeed, undergraduate, too) programs? What grad student isn’t, at one time or another, tempted to take the easy way out—ride the coattails of somebody else who’s (presumably) done the real work? In addition to the ethical implications, such shortcuts tend to invite more immediate troubles, too. Again, George’s work (described above) provides an excellent case study. Below are some examples of how his work has been referenced in the cat predation literature:

“It is very unlikely that cats bring home all of the prey that they capture. What proportion they bring home has been little studied. George (1974) on a farm in Illinois USA found that three house cats, all adequately fed, brought home about 50% of the prey that they killed.” [11]

“George found that about 50% of prey were indeed brought home, with the other 50% being eaten, scavenged by other animals or simply not found.” [12]

“These approximations are probably underestimates, assuming that cats do not bring back all the prey that they kill.” [13]

Trouble is, George never said these things; what he said was:

“… the cats never ate or deposited prey where caught but instead carried it into a ‘delivery area,’ consisting of the house and lawn. The exclusive use of this delivery area was verified in 18 to 70 mammal captures per cat, as witnessed between early 1967 and 1971.” [2]

In 2000, Fitzgerald and Turner pointed out the fact that George’s work was being misrepresented, noting that the erroneous 50% figure “has been reported widely, though it is unfounded.” [14] Nevertheless, the myth persists—even in 2010.

“In Illinois, George (1974) found that only about half of animals killed by cats were provided to their owners, and in upstate New York, Kays and DeWan (2004) found that observed cat predation rates were 3.3 times higher than predation rates measured through prey returns to owners. Thus, predation rates measured through prey returns may represent one half to less than one third of what pet cats actually kill…” [7]

As Dauphiné and Cooper demonstrate, the “reinterpreted” version of George’s work makes for a very convenient multiplier—suddenly,every kill reported is doubled (or tripled, if Kays and DeWan are to be believed—and they’re not, but that’s a topic for another post). Never mind the fact that it has no basis in actual fact.

Getting a copy of George’s study isn’t difficult, especially with the inter-library loan services available today. To reference it—to use George’s work so that your own appears more credible—without ever having actually read it, is simply inexcusable. But citing it blindly suggests more than laziness—it points to a certain coziness that has no place in scientific discourse. Too much Kool-Aid drinking, and not enough honest research.

* * *

Scientists can (and do) look at identical results and come to very different conclusions. But misinterpreting, misrepresenting, or dismissing the conclusions of others, is something else altogether. As the above examples (and there are many, many more!) illustrate, this happens far too often in the feral cat/TNR literature. And if we can’t believe what researchers are saying about the work of others, why would we believe what they say about their own work?

Next, I’ll focus on some of the major flaws in the feral cat/TNR literature—beginning with small sample sizes…

7. Dauphiné, N. and Cooper, R.J., Impacts of Free-ranging Domestic Cats (Felis catus) on birds in the United States: A review of recent research with conservation and management recommendations, in Fourth International Partners in Flight Conference: Tundra to Tropics. 2010. p. 205–219

8. Winter, L., “Trap-neuter-release programs: the reality and the impacts.”Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. 2004. 225(9): p. 1369-1376.